Chennai: The issue of restoring tax free status to Indian software exports has been taken up with the Union Finance Ministry by the ministry of Information Technology (IT), a top official said on April 20.

"This is in the best interests of boosting software exports from the country which had registered a remarkable 30 per cent growth in 2001 despite recession," Rajiv Ratna Shah, Secretary, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, told reporters in Chennai.

As per changes made in the last budget, now only 90 per cent of the software exports were tax free whereas the exports were fully exempted from tax earlier.

Shah said that instead of bringing software exports under taxation, the software firms could be asked to invest substantially in schemes like infrastructure bonds.

Answering questions, he said the target of $ 50 billion worth of software exports from the country by 2008 could be easily met if the present growth rate of over 30 per cent was any indication.

He did not rule out the possibility of the growth rate picking up to the level of as much as 50 per cent in coming years so that the target could be achieved much earlier.

Software exports from the country are present in the range of $ 8.2 to $ 8.4 billion per annum.

PTI